I don't mind it if I end up fighting the ancient evil, but yeah, the game should definitely start off with your "quest" or whatever being a personal thing. Whether it's revenge, or finding a missing friend, or another cliche, or even just wanting to go out into the world and see what's there. If there is something big and mean out there, it should only start to become apparent a good distance into the game.
Someone mentioned Jade Empire, and I actually think that game did it pretty well. You do end up fighting a (albeit not ancient) big evil dude who threatens much more than just you, but the main story really starts with you going of to look for your master and/or looking for revenge on those who burned your village (I consider the bit before this to be more a scene setting than anything else), and it's through investigating these things that you uncover a bigger threat behind it all. And even in the end, there's still a personal reason to go after the big bad as opposed to just "saving the world" if you want your character to justify it that way.
As long as the other races aren't "planet of hats" style, where effectively all members of the race fit the same stereotype - each race should be as varied as humans are - I don't really mind what the races are. I just get so tired of "all elves are tree-huggers" and "all dwarves are miners" with the obligatory one or two members of each race who that buck the trend and are thus the exception that proves the rule. If you can sum up 90% of a race with one word or phrase, it's a badly designed race.